“Whose birthday is it?”

There’s no birthday. But after phoning up a few friends suggesting we go for drinks at a downtown hotel bar, each person sprung into “what’s the occasion?” mode. No graduation. No promotion (sigh). No anything. I just wanted a drink.

You can’t blame them. Until recently, the archetypal hotel bar was “special occasion” territory, or as a place to bring boring out-of-town visitors before taking them to, say, the CN Tower. But times have changed; some - not all - hotel bars have become the coolest hangs in the city. Still, a hotel bar hip-quotient is largely relative to the hotel in which it resides; when located in a mid- or economy-range hotel, the bar will be, more often than not, the standard velvet painting and Perry Como variety. And, unfortunately, this predilection for style-assault has not spared their mixology.

Thank God for the four-star hotel. The Four Seasons for example, wherein lies the recently renovated Lobby Bar, which falls somewhere between expense account and fantasy in the pantheon of lounges offered to humankind.